


The Ravell'd Sleave

by Quasar



Series: Reading Between the Lines [1]
Category: The Librarians (TV 2014)
Genre: Angst, Episode Related - 102, Episode Related - 103, Episode Related - 104, Episode Related - 105, Episode Related -101, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-25
Updated: 2015-01-05
Packaged: 2018-03-03 12:00:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 16,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2850137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quasar/pseuds/Quasar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Navigating life at the Annex is a challenge, but it turns out to have compensations for Colonel Baird.  After all, even Librarians need a place to come home to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The first few days were hectic. 

"Okay, first things first," said Eve, who was good at organizing groups of people. "We'll have to find places to live, not too far from here, and vehicles. Of course we could save by carpooling..."

"I need to be near a pharmacy," Cassandra put in, and shrugged one shoulder. "I have about a week of pills left."

"And what's our budget, anyway?" said Ezekiel. "Not that money is a problem for me, of course - got a little stashed away."

"Well, I don't," Jake put in. "I left my job for all this. Are we going to get paid? And how?"

Eve called up her bank account on her phone. "I've already received a deposit, two days ago. I guess Charlene set that up before the library had to go into hiding."

"But Charlene didn't have time to set anything up for us. Did she?" Cassandra squinted around at them worriedly. "We never filled out any forms."

"No, Baird's right, one of my accounts is up too. I didn't notice right away because -" Ezekiel shrugged not-modestly and grinned at his phone "- the numbers are so big anyway. And I've never had direct deposit before. Seems kinda like cheating."

"Part of my paycheck goes into my family's account, but I never even told Charlene about that," growled Jake. "And I don't have it set up to check online anyway."

"I can help you with that. What's your account number?" Ezekiel volunteered.

Jake snorted. "Like I'd tell that to a thief."

"Unless your bank account is ancient and jewel-encrusted, you have nothing to worry about. Swear on my mother's grave."

Jake squinted suspiciously. "Do you even have a mother?"

Eve cleared her throat loudly. "All right, we have our budget, then. We'll have to start apartment-hunting." She called up an area map on her phone. "There won't be anything near the universities at this time of year - nothing affordable anyway."

"Why not just use the guest rooms?" Jenkins suggested in passing, and then he stopped and actually put a hand to his forehead. "Why did I tell them that?"

Eve cocked her head and looked around the Annex. There were the double doors which ought to be the way to the larger Library but instead led to a broom closet. There was the regular door where they came in from the park, and the door to Jenkins' work room. Beyond the workroom was a tiny kitchen and bathroom. And that was it. "Guest rooms?"

"Upstairs," Jenkins admitted with a sigh.

There was a door up there, Eve recalled, at the end of the corridor beyond the bookshelves and the art-deco railings. "You mean there's a whole suite of guest rooms through that door?"

"Not a suite. One door, many rooms." Jenkins headed for his work room, grumbling under his breath.

The LITs glanced at each other and scrambled up the stairs, Ezekiel jostling Jake for the lead. Eve followed last, watching Cassandra's steps to make sure she was steady today.

Jake managed to get a hand on the door, but Ezekiel had the handle first and turned it. Over their shoulders, Eve could see -

A roiling, amorphous fog of scintillating colors. Jake pulled back with a startled shout, Cassandra winced and stumbled against the bookshelves, and Ezekiel windmilled frantically for balance on the threshold.

Eve grabbed each of the men by a shoulder and pulled them back away from the door.

"That's not a guest room!" Ezekiel yelped as the door slammed closed.

"It's not a room at all," Jake pointed out.

Jenkins' voice floated up from below. "ONE person ONLY touching the door!" Followed by a mutter of "Wouldn't think I would have to explain these sorts of things to _librarians_."

Eve released the shoulders she was still gripping and turned the handle herself. It opened on a perfectly respectable modern-looking hotel room, decorated in slate and cream. There was a computer desk and chair beneath a picture window looking out upon a landscape of the Swiss Alps - she recognized one of the peaks from the time she had worked in Berne, but the city that should have filled the foreground wasn't there. Only mountains trailing veils of mist, and a pine forest below.

"Cool, there's an ensuite!" Ezekiel purred behind her.

"Oh, thank goodness!" said Cassandra in exaggerated relief, and then tried to backpedal. "I mean, not that you're not all... very... I mean..."

"I like a nice long shower too," Ezekiel returned.

Eve opened the drawer of the bedside table and blinked at the ordered rows of ammo boxes, spare clips, and a variety of knives. No guns or electronics, though - apparently she was on her own for that. Or maybe it was in another drawer.

"Is there a minibar?" Jake opened the half-sized refrigerator and grimaced at the bottled water and yogurt cups within. "Guess not."

"Everybody out," Eve said shortly. When they started to protest, she said, "Let's see what happens when someone else opens the door."

Cassandra opened the door to a room with a similar layout, but the walls were painted in sections of different colors. It looked strange to Eve, but Cassandra beamed; the colors had some significance to her. The carpet had a geometric pattern, the bed was high and soft, and the lighting was gentle from incandescent bulbs. The window showed a sunlit glade running down to a stream, with overhanging trees that swayed in a slow dance.

"Are these real places?" asked Jake.

"Yes - No," Eve realized. "I got the Swiss Alps, but it's night in Switzerland right now."

"I think it's just a picture," said Cassandra, her forehead smoothing as she looked out at the view. "An idealized version of something we've seen and appreciated. Or maybe just something we want to see."

"Then mine will probably be inside the Louvre," Ezekiel laughed. But when they stepped out again, he said, "Nah, I'll pass. Gotta keep some secrets. You go, Stone."

Jake's room was paneled in wood - sanded but not lacquered - with ancient art hanging on the walls. The window looked out on rolling prairie, red soil and yellow grasses in wave after wave, with a raincloud marching along the horizon. The desk was capable of converting into a drafting table, and the mini-fridge was packed with beer.

"Now, that's more like it!" he said, and pulled out a bottle to open at once.

"No books," Cassandra noted. When they turned to look at her, she pointed out, "If these really were _our_ rooms, they would have books in them. At least, mine would."

"Mine too," Jake admitted, "but they might be hidden." He opened the bedside drawer. "Guess not."

"The books are out here," said Ezekiel, still standing in the doorway. "Any book we want."

Cassandra brightened. "You're right!" Then she frowned in puzzlement. "But what happens if... we saw there's a problem if two people try to go in at the same time, right? What happens if two people try to leave different rooms at the same time?"

"Or what if someone likes to have their door open, and not be cooped up all the time?" Jake put in.

So the next little while was filled with experiments on the one-door-to-many-rooms. Eve watched in amusement as the others popped in and out through the door in turn, like an old slapstick comedy. At least this took care of some of their logistical problems.


	2. Chapter 2

It turned out that the landscape beyond the guest room's window reflected whatever time suited the inhabitant's mood. Morning reached Eve's window a couple of hours before the others, so she could go out and have a run and plan the day. At some point, she would have to get the others running as well, but she didn't want their training to interfere with her own exercise.

On the third day, something else interfered instead. She had just stepped out of the door wearing her running clothes when she heard a thump and slither from the stairs. She hurried past the bookshelves, thinking of Cassandra's balance problems or Jenkins' heart, but the form struggling on the lowest steps was dressed in tweed.

"Flynn!" She ran down the stairs and bent over him. "What happened? Are you hurt?"

"Nah," he said, more slowly than his usual rapid-fire delivery. "Jus' very tired." He flopped over to sit on the step, looking almost as bad as he had when he was dying. His face was grayish - only partly from stubble - and there were deep bags under his bloodshot eyes. The only color was in the tip of his nose.

"Are you _drunk_?" She said incredulously.

"Course not!" he scoffed. "I'm not as think as you drunk I am, Ossifer."

That pulled a startled bark of laughter from her.

"Just... very tired, like I said." His voice was gravelly, and his eyelids were drooping. He leaned back and let his head loll on one of the higher steps.

"Flynn, your neck - you're bleeding!" She leaned closer and tried to tug aside the bandanna he wore as a neckcloth.

He lifted a hand to push her away. "I'm fine. Just got shot."

"Shot!" She tried to dodge his hand for a better look. The neckcloth was spotted and smeared with bright, fresh red - but it wasn't soaked.

"Just a little bit. But I pulled the dart out right away, so it's fine, right?"

"It was a tranq dart? Flynn, those things release the drug on impact. It doesn't matter if you pull it out."

"Not asleep yet, am I?" With difficulty, he rolled over and started to crawl up the steps.

She caught him by the arms and pulled him up, supporting him the rest of the way up the stairs. "You better not have been poisoned. Did you keep the dart?" Not that she had access to any crime labs nearby for analysis.

"Nah, dropped it."

"How did you get back here, anyway? You must have been shot just a couple of minutes ago."

"It was - I - I had an artifact, but it's gone now." He fumbled at his shoulder, then his side.

She glanced down the stairs. "Your satchel is by the door, it's safe."

"Good. Good." He braced himself for a moment on the first bookshelf, then took a deep breath and squared his shoulders and walked, almost in a straight line, to the door at the end of the aisle.

Eve suppressed the urge to help him open the door, curious about what would be inside.

It wasn't a hotel-quality guest room. It looked like a modest-sized apartment. There was an efficiency kitchen off to one side, a couch and television in the middle of the room with a cluttered coffee table in between, and behind the partition of a bookshelf (populated with apparently real books) she could see the corner of a bed. 

"Wow, the Library really likes you, doesn't it?"

"I _am_ the Librarian." He leaned on her shoulder, apparently ready to give up on the solo walking, and waved vaguely at the book-partition. 

Eve hauled him through the room, still looking around. Nothing was dusty, but otherwise it seemed like a real place, thoroughly lived-in. "This is your home?"

"Yeah. A replica, anyway. I gave up my apartment in New York when my Mom... mmph." Beyond the books, they came to a half-made bed overlooked by a window facing out on New York City. With a sigh, Flynn flopped down face first, then rowed his arms as if he planned to swim up to the top of the bed.

Eve turned away from the window, which showed cars and people that she suspected might be real, though it couldn't be showing what was happening right now, since it appeared to be sunset instead of mid-morning. "Here, sit up, I'll help you get your coat off." After the coat came the tweed vest. Having wrestled the fabric into submission, she set those aside and studied the stains and tears on his shirt. "I think I should go get a first aid kit. How are you feeling?"

He flopped back. "Sleepy."

"But you're not out yet." That was strange, if he'd really been hit by a tranq dart several minutes ago. "Wait here, I'll be right back." She went back to the Annex and pulled out the first aid kit (which she had restocked and expanded since their first arrival here), grabbed his satchel from the foot of the stairs, and hurried back up.

She stopped in dismay before the closed door. "Oh, no. Can I even get back there?" She frowned fiercely at the door. "Flynn's place. I want Flynn's place, not my room. Flynn's." And then she turned the handle, and stepped into Flynn's apartment.

He was still stirring and mumbling vaguely when she got to the bed.

"Turn on your side," she said curtly as she pulled out supplies to clean and bandage the cut on his neck. He must have pulled the dart out right away, ripping his skin, but she knew that would make little difference in the delivery of the drug - whatever drug it was.

"Where else are you hurt? Flynn? Look at me. Can you open your eyes for me?"

He blinked at her. "Always."

"What?"

"Always open my eyes for you."

She drew back a moment in surprise, then leaned in again, turning his chin toward the fading light from the window. "Your pupils are huge."

"Tranquilizer."

"No, I don't think so. You'd have been unconscious within seconds. I think... Flynn, I think you've been shot full of truth serum."

His eyes opened wide for a moment, but he couldn't sustain it. "Huh. Well, that would explain..." He yawned. "Why the artifact brought me back here. The Library could be in danger if I were questioned under truth serum."

"You don't think the danger to _you_ was just a little bit relevant?"

"Well. I'm the Librarian."

"Right now, you're a drugged and sleepy Librarian. Where else are you hurt?"

"Oh, you know -" He flopped a hand vaguely. "Everywhere."

"Come on, let's get your shirt off."

"Why Colonel!" He gasped in mock outrage as she undid his buttons. "On a first date? 'Cept, it's not really our first. More like... third? And we did go dancing."

"You dance divinely," she said in a level voice as she reached the end of the buttons. She pushed the shirt back over his shoulders and hissed at the bruises and scrapes underneath. "But you'll probably do better when you're not bleeding... are you _ever_ not bleeding?" She reached for more gauze and alcohol from the kit.

"I've been busy. But this is nothing, really."

"Uh-huh. Did you learn anything useful, at least? About the Library?" Eve bent over a particularly nasty cut along his collarbone. Scabbed over, more than a day old and showing no sign of infection (yet), but she would make sure it was properly cleaned anyway.

"Maybe." Flynn's eyes drooped closed. "It's still safe. It's not anchored anymore, not the way it used to be."

"But the Annex is connected to the main Library, isn't it? Can you use that connection?" While he was wrapped up in his explanation, Eve studied the scar low on his left side. It looked years old, instead of just a week. But if there was a scar on the outside, there were probably adhesions inside as well. She didn't touch it or draw attention to it.

"Yes, of course I'll use the Annex. But this is like a, a card catalog, see?"

"It is a card catalog. Literally." 

"But also metaphorically. The Annex is connected, but the pieces it connects to are all over the place. Like books on different shelves in different rooms. I need to figure out how to gather all the pieces together." He opened his eyes and met her gaze, looking unutterably weary. "And that's going to take time."

"Well, then you need to conserve your strength. Rest. And eat."

"That's why I'm here."

"Fine. Turn over so I can look at your back."

He turned, with a groan. "There's a bruise balm in my satchel. Very effective."

She pulled up the leather flap and found a small box of carved jade in one of the front pockets. She opened it and sniffed at the pale yellow ointment inside. "Is it magic?"

"Nah," he mumbled into the pillow. "Or... maybe. Actually, I don't know. It does work suspiciously well."

"It hasn't done these bruises much good," she said, tracing a finger down one of the marks paralleling his spine. He'd been shoved or thrown against something - a tree? a wall? - or pushed forcefully down on the ground. She'd worn some similar bruises herself from time to time.

"That's because I can't reach my back to put the ointment on it."

Eve finished smearing the ointment over the big nasty bruise and dabbed a smaller patch onto the point of his shoulder. Then, on impulse, she bent to press a little kiss next to the darkened skin.

The half of Flynn's face that she could see went still and then screwed up into a grimace. "Don't do that."

"Don't do what?" She wasn't worrying about germs because his skin wasn't broken there. Would a kiss interfere with the magic ointment somehow?

"Don't... care about me." He squeezed his eyes shut.

Eve blew out a breath in understanding. Flynn must still be reeling from losing the Library, along with his only two friends in the world. Three friends if you counted the damn sword. "Pretty sure it's my job to care about you," she said lightly, wanting to remind him that she was part of the Library too, if not such an old friend.

But it was the wrong thing to say. "That's the problem!" Flynn started to roll away from her, then thought better of it and sat up.

"Why is that a problem? Flynn, you need friends. You can't do everything alone."

"It's a problem because the Library is manipulating you. It put these emotions into your brain. You wouldn't want to ki- to care about me if not for that." Flynn bent his head, working on his bootlaces.

"That's not true," Eve denied, confident in what she was feeling.

"Oh no? What do you think happened with my first Guardian?"

"She was a woman?" Eve was so accustomed to working in male-dominated fields she had just assumed her predecessor in the job was a man. Then she realized there could be another explanation. "Oh. If you're trying to tell me you prefer men, that's fine, I'll stop kissing you - but that doesn't mean my emotions aren't -"

"No! Not a - I don't - she was a woman. Nicole. She worked with the previous Librarian. Really admired him. They were lovers, in fact. But he... was killed right in front of her eyes. So when I came along, of course she wasn't very impressed with a completely inexperienced academic. But she had to protect me. She had to care. And within a week we were sleeping together." He pulled off one boot, threw it to the floor. "And within three months she quit. She couldn't take it anymore. Couldn't take... me." He tugged half-heartedly at the heel of the second boot.

"It sounds like the Library chose her to be compatible with the previous Librarian, not you," Eve said in a neutral tone as she grabbed the boot and pulled it free. 

"Compatible... that's one way of putting it." He flopped back and threw one hand across his face.

"And I can tell from the way you said it there's a lot more to the story."

"Okay, yeah..." At some point, his voice had shifted into the high-speed nervous patter she had noticed when they first met in Berlin. "So, he wasn't really dead, he really quit and went to work for the Serpent Brotherhood."

"And faked his death?" In front of his lover who was responsible for protecting him?

"Right. And after we found out he was alive and working for the other side, she might have, well, seduced me in order to get an artifact from me and take it to him..."

"She betrayed you." For a man who had already abandoned her once? It sounded to Eve like this Nicole had some serious issues.

"But she came back, she realized they were wrong and turned against them, only they were holding her captive when I caught up with them."

"So she was supposed to be your Guardian, but she betrayed you and stole from you, and then you saved her? All on your first mission?" Eve thought she could understand Flynn's treatment of Cassandra much better now.

"We saved each other. It was mutual, really. But after that - well, we kept working together for a while, pretty effectively too, but she was always worried I didn't really trust her. Didn't really... need her." Flynn's speech pattern had slowed from frenetic to thoughtful. He yawned. "So the better I got at my job, the less important she thought she was to me."

"And by now you're very good at your job, so of course you insist you don't need a Guardian. But you do, Flynn, now more than ever." 

He made a sound that might have been agreement or disagreement. Probably the latter.

Eve put her hands on her hips. "I realize you're hurting a lot over losing Judson and Charlene... and Excalibur, for that matter. And when you're hurting you push people away. But Flynn, you've got me. The Library picked me to work with _you_ , not some other person. And the junior librarians, and even Jenkins - we're all here to help. We want to help. You need to let us help you."

Flynn made the same noise, and she realized it wasn't conversational. It was a snore.

Eve threw up her hands and paced away from the bed a moment, then came back. She pulled the arm down from his face and checked the cut on his neck to make sure it had stopped bleeding. She heaved his shoulders around so his head was on the pillow, and lifted his feet onto the bed. She even peeled off his stiff socks, though she held them at arm's length before dropping them on the floor. She pulled the blankets over him, with one last affectionate pat down the length of his arm, then turned to clean away the first aid supplies and leave him to rest in his darkening, silent apartment.

She closed the door at the end of the mezzanine, took her hand off it and waited a moment. Then she opened the door to find her own room and started getting ready for the day, since there wasn't time to get in a run before their training sessions began. Maybe she would get the LITs running instead - she had always enjoyed jogging backwards lightly while taunting new recruits as they puffed along.

She didn't mention Flynn to the others. Let him rest.


	3. Chapter 3

The morning was filled with physical fitness assessments and training, complicated by the need to be careful of Cassandra's health. Moderate exercise would be good for the young woman, but Eve wasn't certain about trying to train her at hand-to-hand. She would have to design the training very carefully to avoid any risk of head blows, even soft ones. And when Cassandra had one of her dizzy days, how would they accommodate that? The men weren't as fragile but they each had their particular weaknesses that needed work. Basically, Eve was making the training program up as they went along.

During their lunch break she went upstairs and hesitated in front of the door, glancing around to make sure no one was looking. She concentrated on Flynn and opened the door a crack. The apartment beyond was dark but not pitch black; reflected glow of streetlights came through the window from a false nighttime cityscape. Eve could hear steady, deep breaths from the other side of the book partition, so she closed the door again and went to her own room for some yogurt.

In the afternoon she had the LITs reading through some of the Library's mission records. When she had asked Jenkins if there was such a thing, he was almost enthusiastic at first, but it turned out he expected her to start with the oldest archives from thousands of years ago.

"No, I want them to study how the magic and missions of the Library play out in the modern world. Let's say the last ten -" Eve didn't want to sound as if she was only interested in studying Flynn's old missions, though she was. "No, make it the last twenty years."

Unsurprisingly, it turned out that all of the LITs were speed-readers, so she had each of them read a case and then present it to the group, and they would all discuss the reasons for what the Librarian had done and what they might have done differently. Jenkins scoffed at the idea of inexperienced newcomers second-guessing what skilled Librarians had judged necessary, but Eve emphasized that of course the strategy would be different for a team than it was for one person working solo or only with a Guardian.

One of the missions they discussed had been carried out by the previous Librarian, a man named Wilde. Eve couldn't pick out anything he had done wrong from the description, much less any indication of shaky commitment to the job. There was no mention of a Guardian being involved.

Eventually she left the LITs to their discussion and squabbling while she tried to plan out some teamwork exercises for the next few days. It was always the trainer's job to stay a few steps ahead of the recruits, but that wasn't so easy when the recruits were all geniuses with different skill sets and extremely independent outlooks. If Eve was going to play the bad guy to let them practice thwarting her, she was going to have to do a lot of careful planning.

She wasn't really listening to the others' banter until a tense silence fell. When she glanced up, Jake was glaring at Ezekiel, who looked sheepish. Cassandra looked worried and inwardly focused, which tended to mean one particular topic of discussion.

"Not... really," Cassandra said slowly in answer to a question Eve had missed. "Doctors don't like to do that, you know. If they say you have a certain amount of time left, and they're wrong in either direction, people get mad about it. Even if they're right no one's exactly happy about that. So they usually avoid giving specific numbers. For me, well... it _has_ been growing a lot more slowly than they originally expected - I know that much. Probably at the beginning none of my doctors would have guessed I would be around in ten years. So that's something." She brought up a smile, but it wouldn't stick. "In last month's checkup I mentioned something about hoping we'll have better weather next year, because normally I love autumn. And my doctor winced. I don't think she thinks I'll see another autumn."

"But she could be wrong. You could have a lot longer," Jake said stubbornly.

"Oh, of course. She probably is wrong. But eventually... eventually, it will be true."

"Maybe not," Eve put in. "You're living under a very different set of conditions now. Jenkins, how long does a new Librarian typically last?"

Jenkins didn't look up from the object he was fiddling over on his desk. "You want the average or the median?"

Before Eve could remember the difference, Cassandra said, "Median."

"Four months."

Everyone turned to stare at Jenkins.

"Is that with or without a Guardian?"

Jenkins pursed his lips and glanced up at the ceiling. "Both. Without a Guardian the median is ten weeks. With a Guardian, just under eight months."

"You mean..." Jake began slowly, but Cassandra overrode him.

"What if you leave out the ones who failed on their first mission?"

"Then it's about a year. With a Guardian."

"So you're saying we're not likely to have to worry about our pension funds," said Ezekiel.

"About seven percent of Librarians quit or retire instead of dying," Jenkins answered. "Usually an early retirement, but Judson does throw off those statistics a bit. He's an extreme outlier."

"So he _was_ a Librarian!" Eve crowed.

Jenkins looked bland. "Depends how you define your terms. The position has changed over time."

"Is this s'posed to make us feel better?" Jake erupted. "Thinking that we'll all die sooner rather than later? That Cassie probably won't have to worry about her tumor, she'll be shot or stabbed or magicked to death before that's a problem?"

Eve looked at him aghast. "No, that wasn't what I meant at all!"

"Excuse me," said Cassandra, looking upset, and hurried out of the room.

"Nice goin', Baird," Jake spat.

"I didn't mean to upset anyone," Eve began.

"Well, you did!"

"I was thinking about Flynn," she said quickly. "I didn't realize the odds were so stacked against Librarians. But Flynn beat those odds, mostly working solo. Surely, working together as a team, you can do even better. _We_ can do better."

On the other side of one of the decorative grilles, Cassandra paused in her flight along the hall.

"I was trying to clear the air, not poke a sore spot," Eve said to the room in general but especially to the woman in the hall. "I'm sorry if it came out the wrong way. But statistics don't tell the whole story - those case studies prove it." She waved to the archive files laid out on the central table.

"It's the waiting," Cassandra said through the grille. "That's the worst part. I mean, don't think I'm not grateful to Flynn. He was minutes away from dying and he handed me a healing artifact and never even suggested using it on him. It's just... sometimes I think it would be a relief to be just a few minutes or hours or days away from the end. Instead of always thinking it will be in the next six months, or the six months after that."

"We can better those odds, working as a team," Eve promised them all. "And there have to be other healing artifacts out there." She remembered Bathsheba's oil of healing, lost along with the rest of the Library, that Flynn had revealed shortly after Cassandra left with the Brotherhood.

Cassandra came back around to the double doors, passing through them almost timidly. "I'm not certain I would accept it, you know. It's scary to think of... changing who I am and how my brain works."

"You were a genius before that tumor came along and cross-wired your senses," Ezekiel pointed out. "You'll still be a genius after it's fixed."

"And we will all," Eve declared, "pay more attention to those case files. Training and preparation - that's another way we can beat those odds."

Everyone nodded and reached again for whatever file they had been reading. Eve suppressed the urge to go upstairs immediately and check on Flynn. She had a little more respect for the mysterious Nicole - the woman had hurt Flynn badly, but she'd also kept him alive through the most dangerous part of his career and taught him a lot in the process.


	4. Chapter 4

For dinner they had Thai, and Eve surreptitiously carried one of the leftover boxes upstairs instead of putting it in the common refrigerator downstairs. When she entered Flynn's apartment, the sunlight through the window looked like mid-morning even though it was the beginning of the night behind her in Portland. It took her a moment to adjust, even though she was starting to get used to the idea of variable time zones, and her job had always meant coping with jet lag.

Flynn was lying on the couch with his head pillowed on the arm, incongruously wearing grey sweatpants and a T-shirt, with a book lying spine-up on his chest. He must have taken a shower as well, since his hair looked fluffier and the stubble was gone. The bandage Eve had left on his neck was also gone, but the cut seemed to be on its way to healing.

There were some dirty dishes on the coffee table showing that Flynn had already eaten, so Eve carried the Thai takeout to the refrigerator. Using a pen that dangled from the freezer handle, she wrote "Pad Prig Khing Dec 15 2014" on the lid of the box. She never used a number for the month, since she had worked with too many people who wrote dates in varying orders.

Toeing off her shoes near the door, she padded silently around the apartment. She had noticed that there were a lot of books, though perhaps not as many as she would have expected for Flynn. It was still more books than in any of the other guest rooms, as if the Library wanted them to do all their research reading in the proper area. Now Eve noticed that all the books in Flynn's apartment were fiction. Mysteries, science fiction, westerns, and the occasional adventure-romance from an earlier century crowded the shelves. However they were ordered, it wasn't by author or genre or publication date. Some series were grouped together, others scattered. Perhaps it was the order Flynn had read them in? 

He had cleared away the dirty clothes left behind on the floor, and had emptied his pockets onto the bedside table. Pocket knife, keys, nail clippers, various coins, folded scraps of notes, a carved stone that might be for luck or fidgeting or might be something magical... Eve picked up what appeared to be a tiny leather-bound book but was actually a cell phone case. She paged quickly through the apps and used the cell phone to send a text to herself: _This is a text message._ Then she pulled out her own phone and replied, _You said you would send me more of those._ She set the leather-bound phone down in its charging cradle.

A murmur and sigh brought her back to the couch just as Flynn turned restlessly onto his side. Eve darted out a hand to catch his book before it could hit the floor. It was a mystery, she saw, by Dorothy Sayers. She picked up a scrap of paper from the table to mark the page Flynn had been reading, but some of the words caught her eye: "Here the sun stands and knows not east or west." That sounded a little close to her life just now, with the variable time zones. But what was a poem doing in the middle of a mystery novel?

She sat down in the soft chair that angled towards the couch and read the poem, mouthing the words softly because she had always believed poetry should be heard and felt in order to be understood.

"Here then at home, by no more storms distrest  
Folding laborious hands we sit, wings furled  
Here in close perfume lies the rose-leaf curled  
Here the sun stands and knows not east or west;  
Here no tide runs. We have come, last and best,  
From the wide zone through dizzying circles hurled  
To that still center where the spinning world  
Sleeps on its axis, to the heart of rest."  


Was Flynn missing a home to rest in? It did sound a bit like the Library, or at least Eve's brief exposure to what the Library was supposed to be - lying constant and safe at a remove from the rest of the world, preserving wonders long forgotten by everyone else. But from what she'd been learning from the case files, a Librarian didn't get to spend much time enjoying that peace in between world-shattering crises. Was Flynn burning out after too many years of bouncing from one perilous situation to another?

The man on the couch yawned hugely and answered,

"Lay on thy whips, oh Life! That we upright,  
Poised on the perilous point, in no lax bed  
May sleep, as tension at the verberant core  
Of music sleeps, for if we spare to fight,  
Staggering we stoop, stooping fall dumb and dead,  
And, dying so, sleep our sweet sleep no more."  


He scrubbed a hand down his face and sat up, blinking owlishly at Eve.

Maybe that answered her question. The second half of the poem was about balance in motion, instead of rest or stagnation. That balance was something Eve had known in her own career, and it certainly seemed to describe Flynn as she had first met him. But... "It's Love."

"Hmm?" Flynn's eyes settled on her, still a little puffy from sleep, but brighter and clearer than they had been the previous morning (Eve's time) or evening (Flynn's time).

"The poem. It's 'Oh Love,' not 'Oh Life.'"

Flynn frowned, then scowled, then snatched the book from her hands to study it. "Well," he said, and clapped it shut. "So much for poetry."

"You're wrong."

He threw up his hands. "Fine, so the man with the _almost_ perfect memory forgot one word - three letters! I'd like to see -"

"Not the poem. I meant about what you said this mor- what you said earlier."

Flynn looked at her sideways. "Do I remember what I said earlier?"

"Do you? You were drugged."

"That's right! And you shouldn't have been interrogating me. That wasn't fair."

She sighed. "That's true. I'm sorry. I just wanted you to keep talking so I could tell if you were all right."

He _hmmph_ ed and sat back hard against the cushions of the couch.

"So you do remember the conversation, apparently?"

"Which part were you talking about?"

"The part where you said the Library was manipulating my emotions. It's not, and I can prove it."

"You can't prove a negative."

"I had those reactions the very first time I met you, in Berlin, before I ever saw the Library or got an envelope."

His chin was tucking into his chest skeptically. "You thought I was crazy the first time you met me."

"How long did it take before I turned my gun away from you?"

"About... ten seconds? Less than fifteen."

"As soon as you started speaking."

"Speaking English, anyway," he conceded.

"And how long before I turned my back on you?"

He frowned. "That's harder. About a minute? Once those idiots started shooting. Hard to be sure, since I already had my back to you."

"Yes, and to the idiots with the guns."

"Right, I never did thank you for distracting the one who was about to shoot at me."

Eve blinked. "How did you know about that?"

"For the most part, you only returned their fire."

"I was concentrating on the _nuclear bomb!_ "

"But there was one time you fired at them first. You must have been worried about what they were aiming at. And since you had better cover than I did -"

"Your back was completely exposed," she grumbled.

"The Nazis decided seventy years ago where I needed to stand."

She shook her head and then started counting on her fingers. "So: I stopped pointing my gun at you, I turned my back to you, I watched _your_ back. I also took your advice on how to disarm a bomb, and I answered your questions even though they seemed crazy and irrelevant."

His eyebrows were crimped. "All true. But how does that prove you were attracted to me before you saw the Library?"

"It doesn't. It proves I _trusted_ you. Right away. How often do you suppose I do that with strange men who pop up in a hot fire zone?"

"Hmm. So when did you start being attracted?"

"Probably the first time we were face to face without any guns or bombs to worry about. Right after you got the opal."

"You looked like all you wanted at that point was to strangle me."

She shrugged with her eyebrows. "Maybe a little bit. But I was also very curious: how did you get there, how did you know so much, what would you look like cleaned up in a decent suit..."

"And then I was gone."

"And then you were gone, and the next time I saw you, I had already signed Charlene's forms. And only one thing was different."

"You wanted to strangle me more?"

"In the Nazi bunker, I protected you because you were helping me, and you were unarmed. In the Library, when I saw you fencing with Cal, I had the urge to throw myself in the way. Get you out of danger immediately, no matter what."

"So the Library _was_ manipulating you! Is. Still is."

"It's eased off a little bit. And I feel just as protective about the LITs ever since that second envelope appeared in my pocket. But I _don't_ feel attracted to them, any more than I would to men under my command. The Library has nothing to do with that sort of emotion. But you... you're different."

"I am not in any way under your command," he said with narrowed eyes.

"Not just that. Do you know how many times in my military career I've gotten in trouble for outrunning my squad? I always have to try to slow down so we can stay together as a unit, and sometimes I still don't manage it."

"Like in Berlin."

"But with you, I'm running to keep up. Both mentally and physically. And you're good at nearly everything. Is there any skill you don't possess?"

"Charm?"

She laughed. "I'm a little weak on that one myself, so I didn't notice. I did notice how competent you are. And competence is very sexy."

"Yes," he said slowly, his eyes burning into her. "I can agree with that."

"So, almost all of how I feel about you started before I came to the Library. As for me being protective, I think that's part of the job and I'm okay with a little encouragement on that front. And I'll thank you not to die on me again. That was not pleasant."

He blew a raspberry with his lips. "I wasn't _dead_..."

"You didn't have a pulse, Flynn. I checked. And I was holding you when it happened. I felt the... the life drain out of you. It's not the first time I've held a dying man, and I want a long wait before it happens again, if ever." She coughed and glanced around the room, but there were no tissues nearby.

"Hey," said Flynn, shifting in his seat. "I'm still here."

"Yeah." She pinched the bridge of her nose and blinked rapidly until the urge to cry faded. "Yeah."

"Come here." He patted the couch beside him.

She shifted seats and drank in the warmth and vitality next to her. He smelled like woodsy soap, and old books, and a warm sleepy scent that reminded her of baking bread.

"So, you've had a chance to see me cleaned up in a decent suit," he said after a little while. "Did that answer your question?"

"Brought up some new questions. Like how would you look _out_ of the suit."

He cleared his throat. "Yes, well."

She turned toward him, inches away, and rested her thumb on his chin. "Maybe I should check those bruises on your back. See if that ointment of yours really is magical. I could use something like that myself, sometimes."

"Assuming..." He breathed in slowly, watching her lips. "Assuming I can get more of it."

"I have faith in your resourcefulness." She lowered her mouth, he brought up his arms, and for a while they played at being one animal.

 

Eve didn't get much sleep that night; though they pulled the blinds, there was still enough sunshine peeping around the edges to make her body doubt that it _was_ night. And there were other things to distract her, as well. They napped for a while, then ate takeout from three different continents - actually cooked in those places, not just following a particular national cuisine. After a discussion of the merits and demerits of certain movie franchises, they ended up in bed again; afterward, Flynn read while Eve slept some more. Then Eve's phone announced it was time to get up, just as the light beyond the blinds was starting to redden and dim.

"Will you be staying here for a while?" she asked, pulling on yesterday's clothes while Flynn watched her with sleepy eyes.

"I still have more work to do in Hungary, so I might as well wait until morning - in Hungary, that is."

"I bet your reappearance will come as a surprise to the people who shot you," she mused.

"Hmm, yes, that is part of the plan."

She bent to look one more time at the cut on his neck, which was healing surprisingly fast, and gave him a peck on the lips. "But what I really meant was, will you be joining us in the Annex? I'm sure the others would love to see you when it's not the middle of a crisis."

"I don't want to interfere with the four of you settling in as a team," he said with a small frown. "You need to take them on a case, Eve."

She grimaced. "That's what Jenkins keeps saying, but they're not ready."

"They never are, not the first time. You're ready, that will be enough."

She shook her head. "I can't keep them all safe. Sometimes I feel like a hen with three - four! - suicidal chicks."

"Don't try to keep them safe. Keep them thinking and moving, and they'll do the rest."

"Should I come back later?"

"Sure. Come tell me when the coast is clear, so I can escape without running into anyone. And Eve?" He gestured her closer, then grabbed her and pulled her down for a deeper kiss. "I'm not your chick."

She slapped him on the arm and headed out to face her own challenges.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eve has created a monster.

Eve's phone chirped while she was describing her plans for team training to the LITs.

_This is a much better text message than the first one I supposedly sent you._

She glanced at the message, frowned, and lowered her hand with the phone, resuming her explanation. But it chimed again a moment later.

_It's better because I'm actually awake to send the message this time._

She glared at the phone and quickly thumbed out, _You shouldn't BE awake. Go back to sleep._ And put it back in her pocket.

"Who's texting you?" said Jake, after a suspicious glance at Ezekiel's empty hands. "We're all here."

"I _do_ have other associates outside of this group," said Eve drily. "Just a couple of weeks ago I had a whole other career. In fact, I still do, since I'm only on leave and not discharged." She had begun looking into the possibility of discharge, just to explore her options, but instead had found her leave extended to six months. She had the impression that the general commanding her counter-terrorism unit had received a call or email from somewhere very high up, but she didn't know how the Library (Charlene? Judson?) had managed to pull that off. And she couldn't ask them.

"Oh!" said Cassandra. "You mean you're almost as new at this as we are? I thought you'd been with the Library for a while."

"Not even a whole day before we met," Eve admitted.

Her pocket chimed again. She gritted her teeth and ignored it.

A minute later, a series of sharp beeps came from the table where Jenkins was working. He blinked, and pulled from his capacious pocket a cell phone - no, a pager - that was only slightly more modern than his formica-paneled station wagon. He looked at the pager's screen in surprise, then in growing interest. "Huh."

"What's that?" Ezekiel asked. "Someone calling you?"

"Do you have to go out and wait in the woods again?" Jake suggested.

"Sorry. Can't talk. Work to do." Jenkins headed for the door, then turned back to the table and grabbed several tools before hurrying out.

"It's Flynn, isn't it?" said Cassandra. "He's the one texting you. Both of you."

Jake gave a slow, sly grin. "Yeah, that's right, he said he would text you, didn't he?"

"Is he in trouble?" Cassandra asked.

"Ooh, does he need us to come help?" Jake jumped up in readiness.

"Nah," said Ezekiel. "If he was in trouble he'd be too busy for texting. More likely he's bored out of his skull. Am I right? He's waiting for something, but he can't stand just sitting still, anymore than I can." He bounced on his toes with a little smirk.

"Maybe he's traveling," said Cassandra. "I always get bored on buses and planes. And stations and airports."

"He is not in trouble, and _we_ are going to focus on our own business," said Eve firmly. She went back to explaining her plans for the day, and didn't check her phone until they were all on their way out the door.

_But when I sleep, I keep dreaming of strapping Teutonic goddesses. What do you suppose they want from me?_

Her face heated as she followed the LITs up from the tunnel into the sunshine.

The next chime came just at the exact moment Jake jumped around a corner and swung a two-by-four at her head. Not that she would let a little electronic beep distract her (and not that Jake could bring himself to use his full strength against her, no matter how many times she dropped him on his backside). But once Jake was out of the game, she turned off the text alert sound before heading after the others.

When the training game was over, she checked and found several messages waiting.

_This rest and recuperation thing is really very boring, you know._ Of course, not only would Flynn avoid texting abbreviations, he even spelled out the full phrase instead of using "R &R" like a normal human being.

_I suspect a bored Librarian is a dangerous thing._ And he used formal capitalization and punctuation, which meant Eve would have to do the same.

_Pretty sure you're supposed to be protecting me from danger, not leading me into it._ This was the most recent message, only two minutes old.

Now Eve was waiting for the LITs to gather for post-training analysis, so she took the time to reply. _Read your Dorothy Sayers._

_Finished with her._ Of course: speed reader.

_Then read Agatha Christie._

_Started with her._

_Then read_ \- Eve paused to think of something that took a really long time to read. Moby Dick? No... _Ulysses. The Irish one._

_Wrote a thesis on it._

_The Greek one, then._

_Translated it from the original Greek. Didn't finish it, though._

_There you go, something to keep you busy!_ She put the phone away, still with the alert off, to address the LITs as a team.

The morning continued like that, with stacks of messages waiting every time she had a free moment. "I think I created a monster," she muttered under her breath as she typed, _Eat the Thai I left in the fridge for you._

That kept the phone dormant for a few minutes, until _Aaaa! hothothothot_

Eve snorted; apparently she had overestimated the heat tolerance of this particular jaded world traveler. _Ha! Got you to break that perfect prose. Now drink some milk._

Then the team training was done, but any ideas she had about stealing away for a few minutes of face-to-face communication were dashed when, somehow, she was persuaded to go to Boston. And Flynn apparently was keeping tabs, because the nuisance messages abruptly stopped.

At least, they stopped until she got her team into real trouble. And then it was good that she had been practicing multi-tasking, because while she flattened two corporate goons with Jenkins listening through the phone and Jake waiting on hold, a message floated across the top of her screen.

_Ariadne's instruction to Theseus: go forward and down, never left or right._

She sighed. _Don't think that's going to work here,_ she returned, and some of the same words made it into her conversation with Jenkins, but they fit there just as well.

_Try it._

Going forward led her to the elevator. She pressed the button for the basement, but when the doors opened she didn't see any skulls or ancient friezes like Jake had described. It looked like a generic office hallway until she glanced over her shoulder and saw the elevator disappear.

_Guess I'm in the labirynth too._ Her phone thought that was the wrong spelling but suggested "lab rat" instead, so she forced it to use what she had typed. She would look it up later. _Now what?_

_Go find them._

"Hey!" she yelled loudly. "Can you hear me?"

"Uh, yeah, the phone's on speaker," Jake grumbled from her hand.

"Not through the phone, through the air. Can you hear me?"

Jake consulted with the others. "Maybe?"

"You try it. Mute the phone and yell." She thought she could hear something, but it was faint and hard to locate. She started moving forward anyway at a half-run.

"There's something else in here with us," came Cassandra's nervous whisper over the phone.

"Yeah, and we think we can guess what it is," Jake added, also keeping his voice low.

Eve stopped and gritted her teeth. She had to find them before the monster did. Or draw the monster to herself, instead.

As if Flynn were reading her mind, the phone hummed and words appeared. _Gunshots. Binary code._

Eve had no idea how to indicate anything with binary code, but she did know Morse - and so did Jake; it had come up during training. She blasted an L into the air and heard an answering roar, so she ran towards it. Unfortunately, the minotaur wasn't much affected by bullets, but at least it was distracted from the others.

And then they escaped back to the safety of the Annex. Eve was surprised that Flynn wasn't there waiting for them; she suspected he might have given Jenkins a hand in picking out an appropriate symbol to represent the labyrinth. But he was nowhere to be seen - unless you counted the leather-bound cell phone on the edge of one of the tables.

She wasn't sure why Flynn was avoiding the junior librarians, but it was starting to seem like some kind of hang-up comparable to his insistence that he didn't need protection. She sighed and pushed the phone further into the shadow of a pile of books.

When they returned to Boston they were literally lost as soon as they arrived, and the text crawl on her phone agreed with Jenkins that a second return wasn't advisable. _Keep them moving, keep them thinking,_ said the phone, not so helpfully.

But either Flynn was right or her team was finally starting to hit their stride. Cassandra had an insight clear enough to turn into a map. Ezekiel was game for artifact-acquisition duty, and Jake was ready to help her on the diversionary front. It all came together nicely and, with a few minor bobbles, it even worked out.

The next time she checked her phone the message waiting for her said, _If you ever charge into a formless void again..._ The message was several minutes old, but it just trailed off without finishing.

She returned a simple _?_ and was rewarded with _I'll have to come in after you._. She smiled at that and told the others, "I'm going to go get cleaned up, get a change of clothes."

"Yeah, get some hot water on those bruises before they stiffen up," Jake recommended, stretching his own shoulder ruefully.

"Teach your grandmother to suck eggs," Eve retorted, and then paused on the stairs. "Where _does_ that saying come from anyway?"

Jake was happily expounding on the linguistic history as Eve headed along the rows of books. She reached the door and thought carefully about having a chance to try out Flynn's bruise balm, then reached for the handle.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It all looks different from Flynn's perspective.

As every year, Flynn was aware of the approach of Christmas, even though his current mission was not particularly seasonal. A Rakshasa had escaped from a stone prison millennia old. It might have gotten a boost from the release of magic when the Serpent Brotherhood had sheathed Excalibur a few weeks earlier; or perhaps the demon just took advantage of nearby construction weakening its prison. In any case, it was out, and it had eaten several construction workers and multiplied, and now there were four Rakshasas heading towards Mumbai. Every time they consumed a human soul, they multiplied. If they should reach one of the world's most densely populated cities, they would become unstoppable. 

Flynn planned to prevent that. Part of his plan relied on the goodwill boost that would come at midnight when Santa released one-twenty fourth of his Gift to the people in this particular strip of longitude. Flynn gathered together his helpers - one young woman with a gift of mystical foresight who had predicted the Rakshasa breakout, her grandfather who was determined she shouldn't do anything dangerous on her own, and two of the surviving construction workers - and told them everything would get easier if they could hold out just a few more minutes.

But nothing happened. They were all still crouching in fear and darkness, watching Flynn with desperate hope, and listening to the Rakshasas terrorize this small roadside community.

He pulled out his phone and texted Jenkins. _Something's wrong. No Xmas boost?_

_Working on it,_ was all that came back.

"Well!" said Flynn, rubbing his hands together and trying to look confident. "New plan. We have to get in front of them. Slow them down."

Five hours later, he knew, it would be midnight in Greenwich, England. If there was a problem preventing Santa from doing his usual hour-by-hour release of the Gift, the best time to correct it would be then. 

By London's midnight hour, there were seven Rakshasas, three miles closer to the big city, and still no Gift.

After that, Flynn lost track of time a little bit. All he could think was that if the Gift _wasn't_ released within twelve hours, when midnight revolved around to the International Date Line in the Pacific Ocean, then Santa would have missed Christmas entirely. Another date might work, sort of, but it wouldn't be as powerful as the balance point between solstice and perihelion.

Twelve hours was a very long time, which included a lot of running and yelling and waving pitchforks and making desperate plans. At least the Rakshasas weren't quite as powerful during the day, and Flynn's team managed to confuse them in a quarry long enough to get a little rest and food. But sunset was approaching, and Flynn estimated that would be the point where they would finally lose this battle, if Santa didn't come through.

There were nine Rakshasas now, and once they escaped from the quarry they were more determined than ever. Flynn had cornered the first - the oldest and most powerful - and he was moving in, pitchfork at the ready. He disarmed the creature and sent its ancient sword flying -

But he was used to fighting an enemy with only two arms, and he had lost track of the other two. The Rakshasa had another sword. Now Flynn was cornered, and a pitchfork wasn't such a good weapon for close fighting, and the sword was at his neck -

And he felt a rush of strength, happiness, confidence, _love_ flowing into and through him. The Rakshasa hesitated, drawing back a little bit. One of Flynn's helpers let out a bold yell. And he was certain, for a moment, that he smelled Eve's apple shampoo and felt her breath on his cheek.

He shoved the Rakshasa back with his pitchfork, dived to the side and rolled to his feet with the ancient sword in his hand. He didn't care how many arms the demon had, this was the kind of fighting he was best at. Soon he had the creature impaled against the wall and his young Seer friend was darting in to pour cement mix into its mouth. That was the answer for a creature that gained power from eating souls: stop up its digestion. Within seconds the Rakshasa was turning to stone.

It took a while, but Flynn and his helpers and some other residents of this slum on the outskirts of the big city eventually pinned down all of the demons and fed them the deadly mixture. Then finally he had a moment to breathe, and to pull out his telephone and send a frantic text to Eve:

_Please tell me you're still sane._

There was no answer. Not within the next minute while he stared at the phone willing it to buzz. 

_Please tell me you're still alive?_

Not over the next hour as he supervised the residents in pulverizing the stone demons to dust. 

_Jones, what happened? Is everyone all right?_

Not while they separated the dust into little bags and sent urchins scurrying to scatter the dust as far as possible, including on trucks on the way out of town.

So he texted Jenkins instead. _I need a door. Now._ He added the coordinates of this little slice of slum.

Of course, it wasn't the door he was standing next to which transformed, but another one thirty feet down the alley. Three filthy curious children were about to step through it when he caught up to them and shooed them back to their mothers. Then he burst into the Annex on a wave of stone dust and slum effluent which made Jenkins scowl at him.

"What happened!" Flynn demanded at once.

"It worked, they won, everything's fine," Jenkins said. "Here, let me unplug the door so I can get a mop. You want to take those boots off?"

"That _wasn't_ Santa delivering goodwill to all people on Earth. That was Eve. Colonel Baird! Why is a mortal doing an immortal's work?"

"Well, I don't know _exactly_ what happened. They've been out of cell phone range for a while. But they had a plan, and it seems to have worked, so why worry about it?"

"She doesn't have the experience or training for this! Even Santa doesn't usually do the entire world at once, he does it in pieces. What if she - what if -" Flynn paced, clutching at his hair.

"Now you're just spreading the dirt around. Look, I've been checking every few minutes. Right now they're in the middle of a strong aurora, so that's why I can't connect the door. But as soon as the magnetic flux weakens I should be able to reach them. Until then, why don't we try _not_ spreading dysentery to the greater Portland area?"

Flynn surrendered his boots for decontamination while he headed upstairs to consult a text on transdimensional transport - there had been something about overcoming magnetic interference but he hadn't gathered all the details at the time, when he was half dead.

After another half-hour of fretting, the payphone rang, and Jenkins answered it, and soon the door was spinning. And then all four of them, LITs plus Guardian, intact and upright, walked into the Annex. 

They were all talking at once - or almost all. Cassandra was relating how Mrs. Claus had brought Santa's backup sleigh to take him home. Jake was talking about something silly Ezekiel had apparently done. Ezekiel made a retort about a bar fight.

Eve was not talking, but humming. It didn't exactly give reassurance about the state of her sanity. At least she was walking on her own, and smiling a little.

Flynn watched from the shadows above and contemplated joining them downstairs, but they were all so content in their achievements, and he didn't suppose it would improve matters if he tried to strangle someone - everyone - for putting Eve at risk. So he headed for his apartment, but he must have been thinking about something else when he opened the door because he ended up in a completely different room. It was spare and elegant and clean and reminded him at once of Eve: professional but not impersonal.

He sat on the bed - which was, unsurprisingly, very firm - to wait and see for himself if she was all right. And then, because demons, and many hours of running and yelling and pitchforks topped off by a swordfight, he fell asleep, fully clothed except for his sock feet.

He slept through replies to his earlier text messages, but woke when the edge of the bed dipped. Eve was sitting there looking down at him, her head tilted curiously. "I don't need to give permission, or a password or key? You can just walk in here?"

At least she sounded like herself. Flynn rubbed his face and considered he might have used the last little while to clean up. "The Library likes me."

"Can Jones just walk in here?"

"I wouldn't put it past him. But no, it's supposed to conform to your wishes. Jenkins could probably override, if the Library thought he had a good reason."

"Huh. I suppose that will have to be good enough." 

"You can get into my place," he pointed out.

"But not when you're not there. Can I?"

"If the Library -"

"Thinks I have a good reason, right. Scooch over." She pushed at his hip, and when there was enough space she stretched out beside him.

He turned on his side to face her and traced her jaw with one finger, noting that Jenkins was right - he was filthy next to her gold and cream and the lingering glow of goodwill to all. He could still feel the warmth of that aura washing over him in gentle pulses. "Are you all right?"

"I think so. I feel fine - good, actually, but... a little disjointed? Disconnected? I seem to get distracted easily." She frowned and prodded a scrape on his cheek. "And I keep humming."

"I know what you did, but not why."

"Nick - I'm _not_ calling him Santa - was kidnapped. And poisoned. So that was why all the delay. Then we had a little fight with Dulaque and Lamia... do you think I should learn to fence?"

"What?"

"It seems to come up a lot in this job."

"It does."

"But who would teach me? You're really busy, when you're not exhausted. And sometimes when you are."

"You could ask Jenkins," he suggested.

"Really?"

"But finish your story. Why were you delivering the Gift, all of it all at once?"

"Because Nick was sick and he needed someone to help him focus, and he said I was the best choice."

"You could have been ripped apart," he husked.

"I was ripped apart. But I came back together all right. Mostly. I think. That's why Nick chose me. Merry Christmas," she added and leaned in to kiss him.

"Mmm. Happy birthday?" 

She scowled. "Nope. Too late for that. And how do you even know about - oh, never mind. But just for that - and the way you smell and taste - you're going to have to clean up before we go any further." She sat up, pulling out her hair tie and shaking her head to undo the tight bun she wore.

"That's probably a good idea." Flynn sighed and pushed himself up, more slowly, and tried to muster the energy to stand.

"Don't look like that. I'm getting a little ripe myself, and there's room in that shower for two. And I can also get out the first aid kit. Your favorite!"

Flynn groaned and raised his voice as she retreated towards the bathroom. "C'mon, it's only a couple of scratches. I was hardly in any danger at all!"

"Pretty sure I saw how much danger you were in. Pitchforks? Really?" There was a hiss from the shower starting up, and Eve started humming again, then singing in a rich warm voice.

"Good fortune attend each merry man's friend  
That doth but the best that he may,  
Forgetting old wrongs, with carols and songs,  
To drive the cold winter away."

The gentle wave of Christmas spirit that came with the music was enough to spur Flynn to his feet. He grinned and followed the trail of clothes she had left for him to find.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> By tonight, this story will be jossed. Depending how badly, I might continue this story through other episodes, or I might just have to start new stories.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Flynn leaves, Eve realizes there was something not quite right about him.

Eve stared at the carnation Flynn had left behind, and slowly her contentment turned to a puzzled frown. At first, when Flynn had showed up and commented on the door working, she had assumed it was still his same hang-up about not letting the others know he had been coming back every few days for a little rest in between whatever else he was doing. So she had played along. But Flynn kept up the act even when they were alone. It was starting to feel like something more than a simple quirk.

And then, that kiss, just before Flynn disappeared. It was hot - scorching, even. But it wasn't familiar.

That was not the same man she'd been sleeping with for the past two and a half weeks. Or... not the man who'd been sleeping with her.

The hall doors swung open and the others came trooping in, all of them looking solemn except for Ezekiel's swagger.

"Jenkins, there was something Flynn said..." she began, but the older man walked right past her into the back room where he kept his more delicate projects, and shut the door firmly.

"I think seeing Dulaque threw him off his game for a bit there," Ezekiel confided. "Apparently they go way back."

"If you're bothered about something Flynn said while he had the apple, you should just try to forget about it," Jake advised.

"I think we're all hoping for a little forgiving and forgetting," Cassandra said.

"Amen to that," Eve breathed.

Jake frowned. "Wait, you mean... but I never saw you with the apple."

"Flynn and I both..." Eve sighed. "Well, I had it for a few seconds. I pulled my gun on him. And maybe bounced him off the wall a little. And, yes, I said some things that would be better forgotten."

"So you know what it's like. Try not to worry about anything he said under the influence," Jake said.

"Yes. No - I mean, that's not what I'm worried about. It was something he said before we even left for Rome. I thought it must be a joke, but... I asked him where he came from, and he said seven seconds in the future."

"Time travel? Seriously?" Jake marveled.

"Seven seconds isn't time travel, it's a phase offset. And it had to be a joke," said Cassandra firmly. "If he were offset a few seconds into the future, you wouldn't be able to see him or touch him or talk to him. He would _always_ be a few seconds ahead, permanently out of phase."

"Would that - time travel, or whatever you said..."

"A phase offset."

"Right, would that mess up his memory? Because he seemed a little, you know -" Eve waved a hand in the air vaguely.

Ezekiel laughed. "Come on, it's Flynn! He's always a little 'you know,' isn't he?"

Eve ignored him, still watching Cassandra.

"Well, I can't think of a reason why it would affect memory," said the young woman slowly. "But none of this is normal physics, of course. Maybe whatever magic he used to go out of phase, or to come back into phase, maybe that could have side effects." 

"Well, he used the back door to come back, didn't he?" said Jake. "That hasn't been messing with our memories. Has it?"

"Would we even know?" Ezekiel put in unhelpfully.

"Theoretically, an Einstein-Rosen bridge should be able to connect to any point in space-time," Cassandra said, blinking rapidly. "Spacetime - four dimensions, describing any place at any moment - if Flynn is, is parallelling us, the phase shift would require an enormous amount of energy... or else..."

"Or else what?"

"Well, it's, it's one thing to offset into the future, but if he wanted to come back, Flynn would need some kind of anchor to the present. Or else he could get lost and never come back at all."

"Anchor," said Ezekiel. "You mean like how everyone keeps saying the Annex is an anchor for the Library?"

"Exactly. Ooh!" Cassandra's face lit up. "Maybe that's why he went out of phase, because he thought the Library was out of phase too."

"Makes sense," Jake judged.

"But what would be the anchor?" Eve asked.

"Something or someone with a lot of affinity to Flynn," said Cassandra.

"Affinity," Ezekiel mused, smirking. "That's one word for the sparks we could see flying between Librarian and Guardian, eh?"

"Not like that," Cassandra put in before Eve could object. "More like... like the symbolism Jenkins was talking about. It's about similarity, not attraction."

"Similarity," Eve repeated slowly. Similar like another Flynn? Her jaw tightened. "Excuse me, I have to go check something." She headed up the stairs.

The guest room door let her in to Flynn's apartment when she concentrated. Nothing seemed different from the last time she had been here with Flynn. Same books on the coffee table, same mugs in the drying rack, same cartons and bottles in the fridge.

She pulled out her phone and sank onto the couch, checking the log of past text messages. She was pretty sure those were all from the same man, the Flynn she had slept with. So, had he lost his memory of the time they spent together? Was this message log the only record she had to support her own memories?

Or was it the crazier possibility from the discussion with Cassandra - were there actually two Flynns wandering around? And if so, which one was the Librarian and which was the copy? 

Slowly she typed out a message. _How are the whips of Life treating you? Still poised on the perilous point?_

The reply came within a minute. _Whips of Love, my dear Nehalennia. You were the one who pointed that out._

Reference to the Sayers poem and a Teutonic goddess - he'd been working his way through them lately, trying to decide which one reminded him most of Eve. She was just glad he'd stopped calling her 'Bertha.' But no mention of alliteration with the letter P.

She tried again. _Thus, you prove your memory is still better than mine._

 _But you will always win on common sense._ No reaction to the word 'thus.'

Eve took a shaky breath before sending the next message. _How many of you are there?_

The wait for a reply was longer this time. _There is only ever one Librarian._

_I count five, actually. Cassandra, Ezekiel, Jake. Flynn who sends me texts. And the Flynn who kissed me half an hour ago._

_Is he still there?_

_Gone. But I didn't see how he left._

_I'll be there as soon as I can._

So she had to wait. Feeling too unsettled for simple patience, she went back down the stairs to see how the others were doing. Jenkins was nowhere to be seen, and she hoped he was channeling his anger into something constructive. Ezekiel had set up a mannekin (where did that come from?) with a jacket booby-trapped with bells, and was apparently teaching Jake how to pick pockets. Cassandra was watching them with a half-smile, but she also had the squint that indicated a headache. And she was sitting very still, which might mean she was also dizzy.

"How are you doing?" Eve murmured to her.

"Oh... I'm all right," said Cassandra vaguely.

"You didn't speak very much after the power station."

"Mmm. Maybe because I spoke too much before that. Did you figure out what you needed to know? About the phase offset thing?"

"Not yet, but I will. Cassandra, you know that wasn't _you_ , right?"

"Of course it was me. The overlooked janitor claiming power and attention at last."

"I was seriously about to shoot Flynn, until Lamia tackled me. Does that sound normal?"

A line appeared between Cassandra's eyebrows. "Lamia blindsided you?"

"Whereas _you_ completely flattened her. She was still whimpering half an hour later - it was fantastic to see your practice paying off. But really, does that sound like either one of us?"

"I guess not. It's just... if I was going to unleash all the power of my brain, why choose to hurt others? Why wouldn't I unleash it on fixing myself?"

"Because you've been trying to figure that out for years. It isn't any inhibitions holding you back - it really is a terrible frustrating problem that you haven't been able to solve. So maybe the apple made you want to stop trying, and instead share that same pain and frustration with others."

"Lovely," Cassandra sighed.

"There was no real harm done, so you need to try to put it aside and stop worrying. Let's worry about Ezekiel instead."

"Yeah, what's up with that?" Cassandra giggled a little. "Is this really the worst person he can be? He's not _that_ bad. Not evil, anyway."

Eve tilted her head, watching the two men reset the jacket for another attempt after Jake had set all the bells jingling at once. "Maybe it really does come down to inhibitions. You and Jake both hold a lot back. For me, it's my temper I'm holding in, otherwise I'd be shooting this place up every day. When we lose our inhibitions we seem like very different people. But Ezekiel..."

"He isn't _leashed_ , so it isn't so noticeable if he suddenly runs a little wilder than normal."

"Exactly." Eve heard a sound upstairs and glanced up to see a shadow moving beyond one of the bookshelves. "Maybe the lesson we need to take away from this is that we should let loose, just a little bit, every once in a while."

Jake got frustrated and punched the mannekin in the face, knocking it down and sending the head rolling across the floor.

"Just like that!" said Cassandra with another giggle.

"Yeah. Listen," said Eve, "I'm going to make an early night of it. You see if you can keep the boys from doing anything too crazy. Or, you know, maybe just go wild for a change. Whatever makes sense to you." She patted Cassandra's shoulder and headed back up the steps with her jaw firming and her hands curling unconsciously into fists.


	8. Chapter 8

When she entered Flynn's apartment, he was standing by the kitchen alcove with a glass of milk. He was wearing one of his usual ensembles, but in dark brown instead of the cream suit the other Flynn had on. He saw the expression on her face and set the glass down hastily.

"Who are you?" She stalked to within a few inches of him. She was tempted to grab him by the shoulders or even the throat and pin him to the wall, but she suspected physical threats wouldn't go well on his own turf, with the Library on his side.

"Flynn Carsen. The Librarian."

"So are you the original, or the copy?"

"I'm not - it's not like that."

"No? How many of you are there?"

He winced. "Two, but -"

"So which is the original?"

"I don't know! Me? Him? We both are!"

"How long ago did this happen?"

"Two and a half weeks, but -"

"That's how long we've been - you didn't _tell_ me?!"

"I didn't know! I found out today. Just a few hours ago, and there was no way for me to warn you."

Eve broke away from him and paced around the apartment, unable to keep still. "How did it happen?"

"It was an accident. That time I was shot and drugged and I used an artifact to get back here? It didn't just transport me. But I didn't know that at the time. You had me under truth serum - I would have told you if I'd known!"

Eve sighed and dropped her face into her hands. "Okay, I'm going to need some more detail on this. I need to know - I need to really _understand_ what happened. You get that? Otherwise I can't know what to do, or who to trust."

"Here." He passed her a glass of water. "Let's sit down."

She grimaced, wondering how he knew she was thirsty, and drained half the glass. She took the chair instead of sitting next to him on the couch, and placed the glass carefully on the coffee table.

"I'm sorry about this," said Flynn slowly. "I truly didn't know. And right now I only have a vague idea of what happened here today."

She sighed and tipped her head back against the chair. "The eastern dragons said their pearl was stolen and they were about to start a war with the western dragons. But it was a ruse - the pearl was a fake, concealing the Apple of Discord. Which caused a lot _more_ problems for a little while. Dulaque was involved, trying to delegitimize the library somehow, but eventually we got it sorted out and the Conclave ended peacefully with no earthquakes. No new earthquakes."

"There was a Conclave?"

"Lots of points of order and votes of no confidence and all that."

"Jenkins took care of that?"

"Jenkins and Jones and... the other Flynn. Who was pretty scary with that apple. Even Dulaque thought so." She opened her eyes and sat forward again. "So you going to explain the other Flynn?"

"Right. Well. If you really want to understand, I'll have to tell you why I was in Hungary a few weeks ago. I was looking for - do you know what an Antikythera device is?"

She shook her head.

"Well, THE Antikythera device is a specific artifact recovered from a shipwreck near the island of Antikythera, but it's suspected to be one of a category of devices made around the same time, about 2300 years ago. It's sometimes described as the first computer, but it's really more like a, a sort of circular slide rule. Combined with an astrolabe. And a sundial."

"And you were looking for that?"

"I was looking for a similar, but smaller device believed to have been carried by a warrior known as Yehuda. He was associated with the Library back in the day. In fact, I'm pretty sure Yehuda was Judson, even though I could never get him to admit it."

Her eyes widened. "You mean Judson is - was..."

"Very, very old. I thought he was immortal, until..." Flynn's voice cracked and he scrubbed a hand over his face. "Anyway, that's a different story. But I was hoping this device, carried by Yehuda for years or even centuries, might have a connection to him. To the Library. So I went looking for it. I found some documents about it from before the Crusades, and then I found the device itself. Now, this thing is effectively an ancient timepiece, nearly two millennia older than springwound watches or even pendulum clocks. The most accurate time measurement available in its day. And the writing about it suggested the device might do something strange involving time. So I hesitated to activate it. I wanted to bring it back here and study it, instead. Figure out a safe way to use it. But there were some people who objected to my taking it, because they wanted it for themselves."

Eve frowned. "Serpent Brotherhood?"

"I don't think so, although I suppose it might have been an associated group. But there are others, you know, with similar aims. Often more narrowly focused on a particular artifact or temple or whatever, but they all tend to object to a Librarian coming in and taking their precious thing. So, they shot me with a dart - I'm guessing they wanted to question me about other artifacts from the same collection, but none of those were magical and I wasn't planning to take them. But at the time I thought it was a tranquilizer for a kidnap attempt. I pulled out the dart but I was feeling pretty woozy and I couldn't think of a way to escape before I was likely to pass out, so..."

"You activated the device."

"Right. And I ended up here. Without the device. So you know what happened then - I rested up for a couple of days, and then I went back to Budapest. But the device was gone, and the people who shot me didn't have it; they packed up their whole collection to hide elsewhere. The Antikythera device just disappeared. I hit a dead end."

"But actually the device did more than just transport you?"

"Apparently so, but I only found out about that today. See, I started out on the other end of the tangle you got involved in. I had heard a rumor about the Apple of Discord surfacing, so I was trying to find out what happened to it. I was looking in its last known location, which was the ruins of ancient Troy. But some thugs from the Brotherhood were there, and I ended up getting trapped. Well, I say trapped... more like imprisoned? That sounds better than 'buried alive,' doesn't it?"

"You were buried alive?" Eve's eyes flicked quickly over him. He didn't appear injured. His suit was even clean and pressed.

"Big stone sarcophagus, much nicer than a coffin, I assure you. But still, no light, limited air, no cell phone signal... And then, just when I was out of ideas, Judson showed up on my phone."

"Judson phoned you?" Eve exclaimed.

"Not a phone call. He used to do this sort of thing all the time. He'd send me a message by appearing in my dreams, or on a mirror or TV screen, or even on the face of someone sitting next to me on the train. I think he enjoyed throwing me for a loop. I almost had the trick figured out when he, when he died. And then he didn't do the messages so much anymore, except on the mirror in the Library. But sometimes he would still reach me somewhere else, if it was for something really important."

"So you're buried in a sarcophagus, and Judson sends you a message."

"He told me the dragons were on the verge of war. But I was trapped - I couldn't even figure out how to save myself much less the rest of the world. So he said there was a way to get me out. He told me when I activated the Antikythera device, it actually duplicated me and sent one of me to the Annex and the other to the Library. The Library was out of phase with the rest of reality, so the only way I could get there was if there was another me as an anchor."

"Ah. So you're the anchor for the other Flynn, like the Annex is the anchor for the Library? Cassandra thought it might be something like that."

"Cassandra knows?"

"Not about there being two of you. I just mentioned the bit you said - the other Flynn said - about being seven seconds in the future. And she speculated from there."

"Well, if Cassandra or anyone else gets it into their heads to try this, stop them. It's very dangerous. The other Flynn and I, we can never be in the same place at the same time. It could unravel reality."

"That sounds pretty undesirable," said Eve. She considered for a minute, stalling by taking another drink of water. "But... if you're an anchor like the Annex is, aren't you, well..."

"What?"

"I mean, the Annex isn't the Library, it's just a pointer. What did you call it, an access point? Is that what you are?"

His expression was somewhere between disgust and amusement. "I promise you, Eve, I'm a real boy."

"But you're not _exactly_ the same. As the other Flynn."

"We were identical as of two and a half weeks ago. By now we have different clothes, probably some different scrapes and bruises and hangnails and whatnot. But we're really pretty much the same, right down to the cellular level - no, the molecular level. That's why it would be dangerous for us to be in the same place." 

"Well... if you say so. But how did Judson use that to get you out of the sarcophagus?"

"He said there was a way for us to swap places, me and... other me. I would go seven seconds into the future, at which point I would be out of phase with the world around me, so I could basically just walk through walls. But that meant that the other me, who spent the last few weeks in the Library, he would have to be the one to come back in phase and deal with the dragons."

Eve frowned. "But if you were out of phase with the world, with _everything_ in the world..."

"I would be floating in a formless void. And you know my opinion of formless voids. So you can imagine I was reluctant at first. But Judson said he could pull me to the Library while I was out of phase with everything else. And then I would just have to wait a while before it was safe to switch places again."

"So, you got to be in the Library, but why wouldn't the other Flynn just be trapped in the sarcophagus in your place?"

"He had a... um, did he leave anything behind here?"

"Just a carnation." Eve's eyes flicked to the red one currently decorating this Flynn's suit.

"Damn. I was hoping he would have left the Antikythera device. Apparently he has it, and it can also be used for teleportation without a phase change."

"Aha!" said Eve. "That explains... some things, anyway."

"I don't really know how it works, since Judson and I and the device were never in the same place for him to explain it to me." Flynn frowned darkly.

"But you saw Judson today? You spent some time in the Library?"

His expression softened. "Yeah."

"How is... everything? Charlene?"

"She's still very weak. I'm not sure... well, they're both holding on until we can get the Library back properly. I'm not sure what will happen then."

She reached forward and caught his hand, giving it a sympathetic squeeze. "It's nice that the other Flynn is with them, at least."

"I suppose."

"He really isn't exactly the same, you know. Is that because of something that changed in just the last few weeks? I could tell the difference. He babbles more."

"Oh. That. Well."

"Yes?"

"It's because of you. He's nervous around you. Well, I assume he is. I was, when we first met and I babbled too much."

"Oh. That's... sort of sweet, I guess."

Flynn frowned. "He left a carnation, you said? And he kissed you?"

Eve let go of his hand to wag a finger at him. "Oh, no. You do _not_ get to be jealous of yourself. Not when you've only been separate people for a few weeks."

"But they were very eventful weeks. For me, anyway. He's been sitting around in the Library -"

"You're being jealous again."

"But he's had it easy! And now he thinks he can just waltz in here and, and hold a Conclave, and work with the team, and kiss -"

Eve grabbed him by the mouth just as she had done with the other Flynn a few hours ago. "Stop it. Just, no. First of all, you could have been working with the team all you wanted, if you weren't set on avoiding them. Secondly, you've done a lot more than kiss me so you don't get to complain about that. And finally - you've been here, what, four times in the last few weeks? Five times? And you've been running around the world having adventures, plus you did get to see the Library and Judson and Charlene today. He's spent all those weeks with Judson, and I'm sure he was glad to see them but he must have been bored out of his skull. And then today he gets three hours on a mission with me, and for half that time _somebody_ was holding the Apple of Discord so it wasn't exactly peaceful. So if anyone's going to be jealous, it should be him."

Flynn waggled his eyebrows and carefully pulled his face away from her hand. "But, you and I - I mean, you wouldn't - you're not..."

"I'm not going to play favorites. You're both the same person, right? Both real boys? So, if that means I have to do two first times, I can do that."

Flynn's eyes widened. "But -"

"Eventually this is going to be straightened out, right? We'll get the Library back and fix the, the phase offset thing, and then the two of you will, what, recombine into one person?"

Flynn shook his head slowly. "I don't think that's going to happen. It's really very dangerous. More likely one of us will have to stay out of phase."

She caught her breath. "Alone in a formless void? That's... that's not -"

"Not fair? Well. That's sort of what being the Librarian is all about. I suppose one of us could die, that would solve the problem too."

"Flynn! I don't want you to die. Neither one of you. No dying, we agreed on that after Excalibur."

He caught her hands and held them both tightly, which just reminded her of the other Flynn. "Eve... I'm not sure what other solution there is."

"Well, you look for one, then!"

"I will. He's probably looking too - after all, he has the whole Library to research in. And Judson to help."

"You work with Jenkins on this end, then. And if you get any further contact with Judson, pass along whatever you find out. You are _not_ giving up, you hear me?"

"You care about him that much?"

"Exactly as much as I care about you."

"Not even a little bit less? Just a tad? A smidgen? A skosh?" He held up his finger and thumb a fraction of an inch apart.

She slapped his hand. "Stop that. No jealousy. You're both the same person, I care about you both, and it could end up being either one of you stuck in a void or, or making some stupid sacrifice. And I'm not going to accept that. We _will_ fix this." 

"Yes, ma'am!"


	9. Chapter 9

The next morning, Eve brought several small wrapped boxes down the stairs with her. She set them on the long table - not on the desk that still refused to acknowledge her over Flynn, since she didn't want them to disappear. "Flynn left these behind. He said he's sorry they're late." 

There were five boxes, each with a name on them. Ezekiel's was the smallest and he was also the first to rip his open. He frowned at the slender piece of metal inside.

"Is that... a lock pick?" said Eve.

"Yeah." Ezekiel sounded a little disappointed. "Good quality, nice size - pretty versatile - but nothing I don't have already."

"You don't have one of these," put in Jenkins. "That's a magical lock pick."

"It opens locks by magic?" Now Ezekiel looked offended. "Does he think there's a lock I couldn't open on my own?"

"No, no, it's for magical locks. Magically defended locks. The pick will neutralize the magical protection, or at least it will ensure you don't get any backlash from the defenses. There may be a few locks in the world that this pick can't handle, but not very many of them." Jenkins looked mildly impressed.

Ezekiel tucked the sliver of metal into his sleeve.

Eve's present was also small, but relatively heavy; she took off the wrapping to find a carved jade box, with a familiar ointment inside. A small note tucked into the carvings said, 'Wasn't magical a few months ago, but now it is. Use wisely. FC.'

"What is it?" Jake asked, eyeing Eve's soft expression.

"Bruise balm," said Eve. "Useful stuff. What did you get?"

Jake's package was flat; he unwrapped it cautiously as if afraid of what was inside, or afraid for it. Slowly he revealed a small fragment of an illuminated manuscript mounted in a frame. Jake caught his breath.

"What is it?" Eve repeated the question.

"A page from the Book of Kells."

"Not the original, I trust?" Jenkins put in. "That's at Trinity College in Dublin."

"No, but this is a very old copy, a relic in its own right." Jake held it up and squinted through the glass. "Eleventh century, maybe?" Slowly, his elated smile faded.

"Something wrong?" Ezekiel asked.

Jake shook his head. "Nah, it's just... this is from one of the parables in the Gospel of Mark. The one about, you know... hiding your light under a bushel."

"So it's a message," Ezekiel concluded.

"Yeah," said Jake shortly, setting the framed scrap down on the table. "A message about how secrecy messed up my life. Real heartwarming."

"Maybe it's about how other people have faced similar, um, issues," Cassandra said tentatively. "It's a classic dilemma, isn't it? Otherwise it wouldn't be in the Bible, with all those ancient people spending time and energy to make beautiful illustrations of it. So maybe the message is, you're not alone? 'Cause... you really aren't, you know."

Jake's mouth quirked and his scowl eased. "Yeah, okay. Maybe. How about yours?"

"Oh! Um... I don't know what it is." Cassandra's hands uncurled to reveal an eyedropper filled with green fluid.

"Is that -" Jake began.

"Bathsheba's oil of healing!" Eve finished. "We saw it in the Library, right after... uh, after you left but before the Library rolled itself up."

Cassandra bit her lip. "There's a note. It says 'I couldn't take the original vial out of the collection, so this isn't full strength, but it will help. One drop per week to make it last.'"

"Not full strength," Jake repeated thoughtfully. "So it isn't a real cure, but -"

"Could buy you some time," Ezekiel offered.

"But why not take it all at once for the maximum effect?" Eve asked.

"The Librarian knows what he's doing," said Jenkins. "A larger dose won't increase the magical effect. But repeated use could indeed extend the period of effectiveness."

"And if it's not a perfect cure, that means you don't have to give up your visions," Ezekiel offered.

Cassandra nodded and tucked the paper carefully around the eyedropper once more.

"How many drops are in that thing?" Jake demanded. "Twenty weeks? Maybe thirty? Why couldn't he have -"

"It's more time than I would have without it," Cassandra said firmly, her chin lifting. "Time to find a better cure, or get the Library back, or just... time for the sake of more time."

Eve caught Cassandra's shoulder and gave it a rub that she hoped was comforting; she wasn't good at words for situations like this. "Well. One more gift," she said. "Jenkins?"

The older man lifted the garishly wrapped item, oblong and small enough to fit inside his fist. He took a breath. "I know what this is. It's... personal."

"Come on, mate, you can show us," Ezekiel urged. "Who're we gonna tell?"

Jenkins' eyes narrowed. "You want to see? Fine. Here." He took two corners of the paper and pulled, unwrapping the present as neatly as if it were a tootsie roll. A fragment of cloudy white crystal shot through with threads of green appeared from inside the folds. "It's a crystal. Not particularly magical. Not particularly significant to anyone but me." But something in the puckering of his forehead showed the rock really did mean a lot to him, and he held it tightly rather than putting it away.

"Symbolism is important, right? You told us that," Eve tried.

Jenkins just nodded and bustled back to his own desk.

"Right. Okay, holiday's over, time for work," Eve said firmly. "What do we have in the clippings book?"


End file.
